North Korea Blames South for Scrapped Dialogue on Joint Complex

By Sangwon Yoon -
Jun 12, 2013

North Korea blamed South Korea for
the cancellation of talks planned for this week on reopening a
joint factory park, a setback to prospects of improved economic
ties and reduced tensions with Kim Jong Un’s regime.

North Korea was “compelled” to call off the June 12-13
meeting in Seoul due to the South’s unwillingness to cooperate,
the official Korean Central News Agency said today in a
statement. The totalitarian state denied insisting that South
Korea’s Unification Minister meet a lower-ranked official,
saying it proposed an appropriate counterpart.

“The south side had no intent to hold dialogue from the
beginning and that it only sought to create an obstacle to the
talks, delay and torpedo them,” said an unnamed spokesperson of
the Committee for Peaceful Reunification of Korea, in a
statement carried by KCNA. “We have nothing to expect.”

North Korea’s initial proposal to meet indicated a desire
to re-establish economic ties after months of threats including
preemptive nuclear strikes. The discussions wouldn’t have
officially included Kim’s atomic weapons program, which the
regime has vowed to maintain in defiance of international
sanctions.

This dispute is “a labor pain of sorts” to make way for
“new inter-Korean relations,” Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl Jae told reporters yesterday in Seoul. “North Korea will have
to show sincerity if it wants to take part in these relations.”

Calls Unanswered

North Korea didn’t answer South Korea’s calls made via a
communication hotline at the Panmunjom border village for the
second day in a row, the Unification ministry said today in a
text message. South Korea regrets the North’s decision and hopes
it will agree to return to talks, Unification Ministry spokesman
Kim Hyung Suk said on June 11.

Delegates from the two sides were to have discussed
reopening the jointly-run Gaeseong industrial zone and a luxury
resort aimed at luring South Korean tourists to the North.
Marathon working-level meetings on June 9 laid the ground work
for the talks, which would have been the first since Kim took
over from his father Kim Jong Il in December 2011.

Fundamental Dispute

The chances of a breakthrough in any future North-South
talks are slim because the fundamental dispute over North
Korea’s nuclear weapons development remains, the International
Crisis Group’s Seoul-based analyst Daniel Pinkston said by phone
yesterday.

Kim earlier this year threatened preemptive nuclear strikes
after the United Nations tightened sanctions for North Korea’s
rocket launch in December and an atomic bomb test in February.

North Korea on April 3 started blocking South Korean
managers and workers from entering Gaeseong, disturbing
operations which generate about $100 million in annual profits
for the impoverished regime. It recalled all of its 50,000
workers five days later, shuttering the zone for the first time
since it opened in 2005. The park stayed open in the aftermath
of the 2010 deaths of 50 South Koreans in a ship sinking and the
shelling of a South Korean border island by the North.

‘Trust-building’

South Korea’s President Park Geun Hye was elected last year
as the country’s first female leader partly on her pledge to
improve ties with the North through a “trust-building”
process. Park has called a nuclear-armed North Korea
“unacceptable” while saying issues of humanitarian aid remain
independent of politics and that bilateral trust can be
developed through “exchange and cooperation.”

Park aims to alter the approach of predecessor Lee Myung Bak, who abandoned previous administrations’ “Sunshine Policy”
of engagement, during which the Gaeseong complex and Mt.
Geumgang resort came to life.

The “Diamond Mountain” resort at Mt. Geumgang, opened in
1998 by the two Koreas as a symbol of hope for reunification,
has been closed since 2008, when North Korean troops shot and
killed a South Korean guest walking on a restricted beach.

Shares of Hyundai Merchant Marine Co., the biggest
shareholder of the resort’s manager Hyundai Asan Corp., slumped
14.7 percent yesterday. Hyundai Merchant had a 66.2% stake in
Hyundai Asan as of March 31.

‘Alignment’

The U.S. and China, North Korea’s biggest benefactor, have
called on Kim’s regime to return to disarmament talks to no
avail. U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping found “quite a bit of alignment” on stopping North
Korea’s nuclear program at their California meeting last week,
White House national security adviser Tom Donilon said.

The announcement of North Korea’s initial proposal for
talks with the South was significant, coming a day before the
Obama-Xi summit, said Yoo Ho Yeol, a professor of North Korean
studies at Korea University in Seoul.

“North Korea was trying to create a facade of eased inter-Korean tensions, hoping to relieve the pressure the U.S. and the
Chinese have been levying on Pyongyang,” Yoo said. “Instead,
Obama and Xi reinforced their aligned commitment to continue
pressuring the North, which led to Pyongyang seeing no need for
inter-Korean dialogue.”